‘Well, she didn’t come across as especially monstrous; if anything, she seemed a bit lonely,’ I said, squeezing the phone between my shoulder and my ear so I could examine my sharply filed down nails. ‘Not that it matters. I’m just going to treat it like any other job. Come in, do my thing, go home.’

‘Speaking of home, what did Stew have to say about you nipping off to Italy?’

I turned over my hands and stretched out my ringless fingers. ‘Nothing,’ I replied. ‘He hasn’t said anything.’

Hadn’t said anything, hadn’t texted anything, hadn’t sent a WhatsApp, a DM or a voice note. I was officially on the receiving end of the patented Stewart Bingham Silent Treatment. Trademarked and copyrighted the year he was born, but I refused to give in and call him first. I needed this.

‘I can’t believe you’re going to the Crystal Ball,’ Jess said with a dreamy sigh. She really was a master of knowing when to change the subject, one of my absolute favourite things about her. ‘I heard they put on a breakfast buffet at dawn and Gordon Ramsey mans the omelette station himself. And a couple of years ago, Rihanna set up a karaoke machine in the toilets and Leonardo DiCaprio and Bradley Cooper did a duet of “Anything for Love”. And last year, I heard Ivanka and Jared showed up with tickets but got turned away because you know.’

‘I thought it was all super top secret? What happens at the Crystal Ball stays at the Crystal Ball?’ I replied, pushing my unhelpful thoughts and feelings back in their Stew-shaped box and locking it up tight. ‘How is all this getting out?’

‘There’s no such thing as a secret in the twenty-first century,’ she replied happily. ‘Like, someone posted the karaoke photo on one of those Instagram gossip accounts, and it was quite blurry but it was definitely Leo. I think. One person said it looked like Boris Johnson, but I don’t think there was enough hair.’

‘If you can’t tell the difference between Boris Johnson and Leonardo DiCaprio, you shouldn’t be allowed on the internet,’ I said, turning up my nose in disgust. ‘I hate those accounts, people can say anything they like with literally nothing to back it up and everyone believes them.’

‘It’s hard to know what to believe these days, everything is information overload,’ Jess reasoned. ‘But what we do know is you are on a yacht with Juliette on your way to the Crystal Ball and I’m going to need all the gossip, all the photos, and you’re definitely going to have to steal something for me. Last year, they had their own specially printed loo roll and I know that’s true because I saw it on TikTok with my own eyes.’